The Medieval Expansion Of Europe

Download or read book The Medieval Expansion of Europe written by J. R. S. Phillips and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the year 1000 and the middle of the fourteenth century a remarkable series of events unfolded as Europeans made contact with a very substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known to or suspected by them. Leif Ericsson and other Vikings from Greenland discovered North America; European crusading armies established themselves in Syria and Palestine; Marco Polo and other Italian merchants, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino penetrated the dominions of the Mongol great Khans as far as China; the Vivaldi brothers sought to open a sea route to India; Jaime Ferrer was lured by dreams of locating the source of West African gold; and the Atlantic island groups, the canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, were all discovered. For this Clarendon Paperback edition, Professor Phillips has added a new Foreword and Conclusion, as well as a bibliographical essay, surveying recent work in what is becoming a thriving area of research.